Author: Jennifer Barraclough

Life events

~ Jennifer Barraclough ~ 2 Comments

Following a very eventful year, I have more big changes coming up.

Tomorrow will be the first anniversary of the death of my beloved husband Brian. We were together for nearly 50 years. Brian is always in my thoughts anyway, so I don’t suppose the anniversary will change the way I feel, but it does seem significant and I appreciate the friends and relatives who are helping me to mark the occasion.

In Oxford mid 1990s

In a month or so I am going to move house. Leaving the villa that was our marital home for 25 years will involve a mixture of regret and relief. I love the old property with its large garden, and all its memories, but it is too big for one person and requires continual maintenance. The new house needs a complete renovation, which is proving both exciting and expensive, but will be beautiful when it is finished. Going there will mark the start of a new chapter in my life.

The future bathroom

And my 80th birthday is approaching. This milestone is making me more conscious of mortality. Having lost my partner, and being aware of all the other losses that come with advancing age, I have no wish to live for many more years. But so far I am still reasonably fit and healthy and enjoying life. I hope to make worthwhile use of whatever time is left, though don’t aspire to measure up to Joan Collins who starred in the recent film My Duchess at the age of 92, or novelist Edna O’Brien was 88 when she wrote the novel Girl.

Will I write any more books?  I’ve nearly finished a short memoir about my marriage to Brian. I hesitate to publish such a personal document on Amazon, so will just print a few copies for any friends or relatives who may be interested. I don’t feel inspired to write another novel at present, but am running a professional marketing campaign for my back fiction list. Here are short video trailers for two of my books, No Good Deed and You Yet Shall Die.

https://go.screenpal.com/watch/cOXVbznyszo.

https://go.screenpal.com/watch/cOXVbunysaB

A period of my career back in the 1980s involved “life event” research. Life event experience is strongly linked to the development of depression, and to a lesser extent that of physical ill health. The impact of an event depends on the individual’s resilience, how far the situation is under their own control, how they perceive it – for example as a punishment or a challenge – and how well they are supported by social contacts and adequate funds. The majority of life events appear “negative”, but even “positive” ones can be stressful, whereas the negative ones often turn out to have a silver lining in the long term.

Downsizing

~ Jennifer Barraclough ~ 4 Comments

The home which my husband Brian and I shared for 25 years is not a suitable place for me to spend the rest of my life. A wooden villa built before 1870, with gardens and a pool, it is too big and expensive for me to maintain on my own. Now, almost a year since Brian died, it is time for a change. I will be very sad to leave this property but hope it can be sold to a young family who will love it as much as we did.

The prospect of moving with my two cats to a smaller, warmer, more modern house closer to the village is both exciting and daunting. Inevitably it means giving up many possessions. I don’t like the term “decluttering” because it could imply that these surplus goods are junk, which most of them are not, even if they may be too old-fashioned to have any monetary value.

William Morris said Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. More recently, in Marie Kondo’s popular system, the key question to ask when deciding whether to keep an object is “Does it spark joy?”

With the starkly named method of Swedish Death Cleaning, older people are advised to reduce their possessions to the essentials, so as to save trouble for their survivors. That sounds very noble. But although I do try to keep my things in good order and take unwanted ones to charity shops, I am reluctant to give up those non-essentials that will continue to “spark joy” for however long I have left to live.

There are many items that I want to keep for sentimental reasons. The wooden chest from a country fair with the initials B and J on top. The picture we bought the first time we went to a London exhibition. Brian’s vast library of books on diverse subjects, and copies of all his academic publications. The jewellery that I seldom wear but reminds me of our holidays together. The footstools and cushions that my mother embroidered with cats and flowers. And the many volumes of photos …

A sweet little flower self-sown in a crack in our garden path.

Overdose: A novel

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Along with the campaign that is currently running to promote my fiction catalogue, I’ll be posting images of some individual titles in the coming weeks.

Overdose was the first novel I wrote, so long ago that it now counts as historical fiction. It’s a tragicomic story which gives an authentic picture of life in a psychiatric hospital in the late 1970s. Much has changed since then and some modern readers may find the book rather shocking.

Summer in London

~ Jennifer Barraclough ~ 3 Comments

It seems like only yesterday that my husband Brian died, but it’s actually nine months ago. While not feeling at all like a “Merry Widow” I’m aiming to enjoy life as best I can, and so decided to spend another holiday in London this year. I’ve visited the UK on my own many times before, but it’s different now without the long phone calls every night to Brian back home in Auckland, and revisiting all the places we used to go together brings back bittersweet memories. In other ways it’s the same, and lovely to be back in my home country during the hot dry summer. Wimbledon, strawberries, and with my invaluable Britrail pass which allows unlimited train travel I’ve been overwhelmed with hospitality from family and friends living in (listed alphabetically) Berkshire, Dorset, Hampshire, Kent, Merseyside, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Sussex both East and West, Wiltshire and Yorkshire as well as Greater London. Here are a few photos.

Near Bridport, Dorset
In Hyde Park
York Gate Gardens
“Bob” in the River Washburn
Bognor Regis beachfront

Returning home without Brian to welcome me is the hardest thing, but I look forward to retrieving Magic and Leo from the boarding Cattery, and hope they will forgive me for confining them there.

Magic and Leo